About 96 percent of the respondents to a survey whose results were released in Beijing Monday have said that the Japanese government's approval of a fresh version of middle school history textbooks last week "constitutes an insult to the Chinese people".

The Social Survey Institute of China, a former governmental institution which has now turned independent, interviewed 1,000 residents in major Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing and Shenyang by telephone to seek their comments on Japan's approval of the new textbooks.

About 93 percent of the respondents said the move of the Japanese government had "distorted history gravely", while 96 percent of them said "such action had severely hurt the Chinese people's feelings and constituted an insult to the Chinese people," according to the survey results.

About 81 percent of the surveyed responded that Japan's action was an "open provocation" and "a crime committed against world peace and harmony". Ninety-seven percent of them demanded the Japanese government "make a thorough retrospection" of the country's aggressive past and apologize, the survey report said.

China holds that the textbooks approved on April 5 have severely distorted the truth about Japan's invasion of China and the wartime atrocities of the Japanese troops during World War II.

The textbook alleged that the Lugou Bridge (also known as the Macro Polo Bridge) Incident in north China on July 7, 1937, which marked the beginning of the war, was triggered by China.

It also challenged the validity of the 1937 Nanking Massacre, during which the Japanese troops savagely murdered more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers after taking the then Chinese capital.